the m0vie blog

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney and this week with special guests Charlene Lydon and Grace Duffy, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil.

A murder in a small border town stokes local tensions, as Ramon Miguel Vargas finds himself drawn into an investigation overseen by Police Captain Hank Quinlan. As Quinlan pursues his lines of inquiry, Vargas quickly comes to realise that his would-be partner is not what he appears to be.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 241st best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Show notes:

• Recorded 2nd September 2018.
• The first of two “lost” episodes among the first one hundred episodes of the podcast released. The other, Intouchables, will be released next week.
• The movie actually dropped off the list between the recording and the release of the episode.
• Note: Darren refers to Touch of Evil as Orson Welles’ eighth movie; it was his eighth credited feature-length film as director, but he had directed lots of supplementary material before this.
• Touch of Evil at The Internet Movie Database.
• The IMDB 250 as it appeared at time of recording.
• Follow Charlene on Twitter.
• Visit the Lighthouse Cinema’s homepage.
• Follow the Lighthouse Cinema on Twitter.
• Follow Grace on Twitter.
• Roger Ebert discusses Touch of Evil as part of his Great Movies series, September 1998.
• Walter Murch at The New York Times on editing together a new version of Touch of Evil, September 1998.
• Rick Schmidlin talks to Wellesnet about re-editing and restoring Touch of Evil, October 2008.
• Jonathan Rosenbaum discusses the origins of the retouched version of Touch of Evil, October 2007.
• Peter Alilunas at Screening the Past on the history and the legend that has developed around Touch of Evil, January 2015.
• Orson Welles talks to Cahiers du Cinéma about the power of editing, June 1958.
• Mark Chapman at Bright Lights Film Journal on the use of sound in Touch of Evil, April 2012.
• Glenn Kenny at Some Came Running on aspect ratio controversies around Touch of Evil, October 2016.
• The trailer for The Other Side of the Wind, August 2018.
• Zachary Davis at The Cinessential on the impact and legacy of Touch of Evil, January 2017.
• Tom Joliffe at The Flickering Myth on the legacy of John Cazale, August 2018.
• Maureen Callahan at The New York Post on the tragic relationship between Meryl Streep and John Cazale, April 2016.
• Brass Eye covers Drugs, February 1997.
• Neena Satija at NPR on the toxicity of the Rio Grande, October 2013.
• Daniel White at Time on Barack Obama drinking Flint tap water to prove that it’s safe, May 2016.
• Claudio Sanchez at NPR discusses rejected stereotypes in Touch of Evil, August 2011.
• Patrick Brown at The Cinessential on framing and borders within Touch of Evil, February 2017.
• Ryan Reft at Topics of Meta on the idea of borders and liminal spaces in Touch of Evil, October 2013.
• Robert C. Cumbow at Parallax View on borders and bounderies within Touch of Evil, October 2008.
• Alexander Schroeder at film noir of Tanya as a stateless arbitrator in Touch of Evil, March 2015.
• George Ramos at The Los Angeles Times on the legacy of the Sleepy Lagoon case, February 1993.
• Orson Welles writes in defense of the accused in the Sleepy Lagoon case, June 1943.
• Chris Lamb at The Conversation on the blinding of Isaac Woodard, February 2016.
• Mike Teal at Wellesnet on Orson Welles as an advocate for Isaac Woodard, July 2016.
• Nathan Jolly at SBS on marijuana scare propaganda in early cinema, November 2016.
• Marc Miller at The New England Quarterly on working women and the legacy of the Second World War, March 1980.
• Esther Inglis-Arkell at io9 on sodium pentothal as truth serum, April 2012.
• Paul F. Tompkins discusses stealing videos from his video store job in Labouring Under Delusions, April 2012.
• Catherine Nichols at Jezebel on the presentation of Atticus Finch in Go Set a Watchman, July 2015.
• Jessica Zaleski at Buzzfeed ranking the worst characters on The O.C., January 2014.
• The original takes of Orson Welles’ Paul Masson wine commercials, 1980.
• I’m Not a Misogynist by Charles Bukowski, June 1986.
• Amanda Hess at Slate on reading mid-twentieth century misogynistic writers, December 2013.
• Charlton Heston talks to Parallax View about the making of Touch of Evil, October 2008.
• Brit And Nick at Cracked riff on every awards movie trailer ever, March 2010.
• Mission to Zyxx.
• Presenting Alfred Hitchcock at The Lighthouse.
• Wynonna Earp on Netflix.
• Follow The 250 on Twitter.
• Subscribe to The 250 on iTunes.
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• Listen to The 250 on Soundcloud.

Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: borders, charlene lydon, Charlton Heston, corruption, grace duffy, imdb, justice, Mexico, orson welles, podcast, reefer madness, rio grande, the oc, violence |